A fence surrounds Sleeping Beauty Castle during the first day of a $300,000, extensive castle refurbishment at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, on Monday, Jan 7, 2019. the work will continue through the spring. The refurbishment will not change the castle significantly.. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Disneyland certainly knows how to tug at the emotions of its many visitors. But no parade, fireworks show or special event triggers Disney fans quite like the annual price increase does.

The resort pulled that trigger again over the weekend, eliciting rage, derision, snark and even a few gleeful posts from fans who reacted to the news online. Every time Disneyland raises its prices, many fans declare that they are done and won’t return to the parks. They insist that, this time, Disney has gone too far and that the latest price increase will be the one that finally breaks the resort and causes its attendance to crash.

Others look forward to that possibility with delight instead of anger, sneering that Disney should have raised prices by even more, presumably to keep out the tourist riffraff who dare get in the way when they are trying to watch the parade for the 500th time.

Yet with each price increase, the crowds continue to grow, and Disneyland’s annual attendance and revenue continue to rise. Every time a fan quits Disneyland in a rage, it seems another fan steps forward … and brings a friend.

Of course Disneyland is going to keep raising its prices if its fans show that they are eternally willing to pay. And why not? Even if you cough up Disneyland’s top price of $199 for a one-day Park Hopper on a peak attendance day, you’re still getting a better deal than you would with Lakers or Chargers tickets, seeing a Broadway show, or heading up to the mountains for a day on the slopes. Disneyland offers a full day and night of entertainment for less than what many people pay for those alternatives.

But most Disneyland visitors are not paying anywhere near $199 a day to visit. Disneyland’s most popular annual pass, the Southern California Select, went up eight percent from $369 to $399 a year. Even if you just went the 13 Fridays that pass is valid at California Adventure over the next 12 months, that would work out to about $31 a visit. Many fans visit more often than that, reducing a day at the Disneyland Resort to somewhere in the range of a movie ticket.

Disneyland raised the prices on its less-restrictive annual passes by much more, up to nearly 25 percent on its top pass. That’s because Disneyland wants to make it a lot more expensive to visit its theme parks on what traditionally have been the busiest days. It used to be that Disneyland’s daily prices stayed the same throughout the year, but the crowd level fluctuated. Disney now wants to flip that. The company wants the prices to vary so that the crowd levels will even out over the year.

Sure, this price increase probably will drive more fans to Knott’s Berry Farm and Universal Studios Hollywood, both of which have seen their attendance surge as Disneyland keeps raising its prices. But it won’t stop more people from coming to Disneyland, too. For the more that people obsess over Disneyland’s ticket prices, the more that many of them see that theme parks remain one of the better entertainment values out there — no matter what you pay to visit them.